Bruce Speck’s Greatest Hits #7: Money. It’s a gas.

He is, in fact, a fund raising cancer. There is a reason Mark Parsons ran screaming from town and JoAnn Graffam is probably using a frequent shopper card at Kinko’s, too.

We have belabored this problem here many times, but here are some new points:

Julio Leon and Curt Bettebenner never raised huge amounts, but they got PROJECTS done. They secured the Beimdiek Recreation Center and Health Sciences funding. They got Leggett & Platt built. And Robert Plaster made a significant donation for the school of business. The medical school project was stillborn and we haven’t heard any news on the athletics facilities fund raising.

A look at IRS documents from ProPublica.org shows that College Heights Christian School raised nearly $1 million more in FY11 than the Missouri Southern Foundation raised in FY12. College Heights has an enrollment of 285. This is despite changing the Foundation director position to a VP paid by both the Foundation and the University and creating two full-time fundraising positions after John Tiede retired. And now hiring Alan Marble to boot.

The Ralph Gray Alumni Center got built because of the tireless work of Lee Elliff Pound and Elisa Bryant and despite the administration. It is probably the project that made the best progress most quickly and with the best quality. The building is a showpiece and doesn’t have the HS Building fucked up roof or Fullerton’s Wall. Bryant probably got promoted because she could give some of these asshats a clinic in donor development.

Just look at his track record. What has Speck added to the campus that wasn’t underway under Leon?